Since discovering the Taiwan theft last Monday, Taiwan’s major state-run banks have frozen withdrawals from nearly 1,000 ATMs of the kind targeted in the heist, which are supplied by Germany’s Wincor Nixdorf.

About 4% of Taiwan’s national ATM network of 27,200 machines are affected.

Investigators have identified three different malware programs that were used to trigger withdrawals.

Taiwan’s Hung Makes Nationalist Party Comeback With Party Chief Win

Taiwan’s opposition Nationalist Party picked as its new leader a woman it had ditched as its presidential candidate weeks before January’s election after a wave of criticism of her campaign.

Pro-China Hung Hsiu-chu, a one-time schoolteacher known by the nickname “Little Hot Chili Pepper,” won 56% of the vote, a Nationalist Party spokeswoman said, beating three other candidates.

“Thanks to so many comrades’ support … giving me a chance to bend down and pick up the first brick to lead the Nationalist Party to rebuild our home from the debris,” Hung told a news conference.

“In the face of such a difficult and hard future situation, as long as we have courage there is no difficulty we cannot overcome. Please join me and work with me,” she added.

Hung’s victory marks a comeback for a woman who, in October, was removed as her party’s candidate for January’s presidential election after a campaign riddled with gaffes and political attacks.

The change made no difference, however, as her replacement, Eric Chu, still ended up being trounced in by Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Chu resigned as party chief after the defeat.

Tsai will take over as president in May from Ma Ying-jeou who has held the position for the Nationalists since 2008.

Known in Chinese as the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party ruled China before being forced to flee to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of a bloody civil war with the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing claims Taiwan as a renegade province to be brought under its control by force if necessary.

Startup Gogoro is shipping its first souped up electric scooters this weekend

An experiment with electric scooters, and a new way to power them, will hit an important early milestone tomorrow. Startup Gogoro says the company plans to ship its first run of 400 pre-ordered scooters to customers in Taipei this weekend.

The company, which launched early this year, has also installed 65 of its battery stations around Taipei for customers. The kiosks — called battery swapping stations — enable customers to quickly swap out the scooter’s empty and low charged batteries with charged ones.

The news is a big deal for the startup, and kicks off the first commercial use of the company’s scooters and infrastructure. Gogoro needs this first testbed to work well if it’s going to expand to other cities. The startup will also be able to use this first deployment to work out any kinks it encounters.

Startup Gogoro’s electric scooter.Photo courtesy of Gogoro

The company is the brainchild of entrepreneur Horace Luke, the co-founder, CEO, and major designer of the scooter. Luke was formerly the chief innovation officer at HTC and also worked for almost a decade at Microsoft, helping deliver products like Xbox. His partner is co-founder and CTO Matt Taylor, who Luke worked with at both HTC and Microsoft.

While Gogoro emerged publicly earlier this year, the company was founded in 2011 and is funded by $150 million from some of Asia’s wealthiest entrepreneurs including Sam Yin, from Ruentex Group, and Cher Wang, the co-founder and chairwoman of HTC. Gogoro premiered first in a crowded Asian city that has already embraced driving on two-wheels.

Luke and his team worked intensely to design a scooter with new technology, computing, and connectivity in hopes that it would appeal to customers. The scooter can go 0 to 31 mph in 4.2 seconds — it maxes out at 60 mph — and can lean left and right at 45 degrees. It can also do quick and tight turns and abrupt stops and starts.

The connectivity and mobile app lets drivers see which batteries are available at charging stations so they know better where to go. The scooters have a range of 60 miles, and have two portable batteries that can be removed. Panasonic worked with Gogoro to provide customized batteries for the scooters.

The mobile app for its scooter, from startup Gogoro. Photo courtesy of Gogoro.

Last month Gogoro said the scooters would cost $4,100 for a basic version and $5,100 for a higher performance version. That’s at the higher end of the scooter market in Taipei.

The battery swapping kiosks might seem like a mundane idea, but they are actually one of the most daring strategies on Gogoro’s part. Companies have tried to make battery swapping systems for electric vehicles sucessful for years, mostly to no avail.

Years ago a company called Better Place introduced an electric car network with battery swapping systems in Israel, which fell totally flat and lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Tesla TSLA has also dabbled with battery swap stations, but CEO Elon Musk recently said that very few of its customers wanted to use the test swap station it built in Central California.

Because Gogoro is building an electric scooter swapping system, it has far lower costs than Better Place did. And scooter drivers remove their own batteries and replace them, which makes the system relatively easy and quick. In contrast, electric cars have to park above an automated battery swapping system and have their batteries removed from below.

Gogoro is also trying to avoid the mistakes of Better Place by getting its customers excited about the scooter, as a product, regardless of the swapping infrastructure.